The present invention relates to a component made of natural or synthetic stone for cladding protruding parts in the building field, for example the front part of the steps of a staircase.
Conventionally profiled elements are used for finishing the edges of steps and the like or for blending protruding parts of furnishings, said profiled being constituted by a contoured element which is provided, in a rear region, with means for anchoring to the element for cladding the structure that constitutes the horizontal surface and/or to the structure itself and blends the surface and the vertical surface of the step or other protruding part of furnishings.
However, these profiled elements, known as xe2x80x9cstair trimsxe2x80x9d, suffer drawbacks, including the fact that they do not allow to obtain a uniform finish and a uniform color, since it is extremely difficult to obtain stair trims having the same shade of color as the parts to be finished.
Further conventional products for cladding the front part of steps and the like are constituted by a plurality of stacked tiles; in turn, these products require the use of pigmented bonding agents which must have the same color and shade as the tiles.
As an alternative, in order to obviate the above, these products can have, at the front edge of the stacked tiles, a contoured front which is glued to their exposed surface.
These products are in any case very heavy and expensive and require additional processes for facing the adjacent surfaces of the tiles; moreover, it is necessary to provide a cutout, or seat, on the front part of the structure that constitutes the horizontal surface of the step, in order to allow to position the product so as to avoid unaesthetic and dangerous differences in level.
The prior art also comprises products constituted by an upper tile which has, at the front and in a downward region, multiple portions of faced and stacked tiles which form a sort of finishing border for the protruding part.
In this case, with respect to products constituted by multiple stacked tiles, weight and size are partially reduced, but it is still necessary to carry out the additional operation of facing the surfaces that make mutual contact, in addition to the fact that the final thickness of the product is determined by the thicknesses of the stacked tile portions.
The aim of the present invention is to eliminate the above-noted drawbacks of conventional kinds of profiled element and product, providing a component made of natural or synthetic stone for cladding protruding parts in the building field, for example the front part of the steps of a staircase, which is variable in thickness and aesthetically valid, does not require the use of particular adhesives and pigments, is extremely compact and lightweight, and requires no additional operations for facing and forming cutouts and the like, as well as finishing elements.
Within the scope of this aim, an object of the present invention is to achieve the above aim with a structure which is simple, relatively easy to provide in practice, safe in use, effective in operation and relatively low in cost.
This aim and this object are both achieved by the present component made of natural or synthetic stone for cladding protruding parts in the building field, for example the front part of the steps of a staircase, characterized in that it comprises a tile which has, at its front edge, a first and a second strip which are respectively arranged at right angles and parallel to the tile, are mutually rigidly coupled and form a sort of a reversed L-shaped profiled element, the exposed surface of the profiled element being faced, fixing means being interposed in the interspace between the strips and the front edge portion of the tile.